Welcome to Travel Massive.
This is a blind-friendly version of the Travel Massive homepage.
This page contains 5 sections: developer log, member activity, latest posts, upcoming meetups, and classified ads.
Here's 10 things that happened most recently:
Here are the 10 most recent posts:
Thanks to everyone who joined us LIVE for [What's Driving Content Monetization in 2026](www.travelmassive.com/events/live-webinar-whats-driving-content-monetization-in-2026-4665056992) in partnership with Stay22 for a candid conversation on turning travel content into a sustainable business, and special thanks to our expert panel for sharing their experiences.
One theme ran through the whole conversation: sustainable success as a travel content creator comes from treating the work like a business. That means building a focused niche, diversifying income beyond ads and sponsorships, being strategic about press trips and pitches, and pairing genuine passion with professionalism.
Missed the LIVE webinar? Watch the replay below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BTUrveC9zU
Meet our expert panel: [Kash Bhattachary](www.travelmassive.com/@budgettraveller) (Founder and Editor of [BudgetTraveller](budgettraveller.org)), [Carae Hilcher](www.travelmassive.com/@girlonazebra) (Travel Blogger at [Girl on a Zebra](girlonazebra.com)), and [Félix Contant](www.linkedin.com/in/felixcontant1/) (Creator Partnerships at [Stay22](www.stay22.com)), moderated by [Matthew Gardiner](www.travelmassive.com/@matthewgardiner) ([London Travel Massive](www.travelmassive.com/posts/london-travel-massive-979884824)).
👉 This LIVE webinar explored findings from [The Travel Creator Economy in 2026 Report](www.travelmassive.com/stay22/creators-2026-report) — download it for free to dive into our global survey of more than 500 creators and industry members.
Ready for the recap and ten key takeaways? Let's roll!
1. What makes a creator go pro
What separates full-time creators from hobbyists is treating the blog like a business from day one. That was Kash's core point — a mindset he credits to his background in publishing. The habits that mark serious creators: consistency, ongoing investment in skills like SEO and copywriting, and regular attendance at industry events ([WTM](www.wtm.com/london/en-gb.html), [ITB](www.itb.com/en), [Travel Massive Asia](www.travelmassive.com/events/travel-massive-asia-conference-2026-da-nang-3982452889)). Consistency, he admitted, is still something he struggles with after 17 years.
The transition from hobby to full-time is less about talent than commitment. Félix compared it to learning a new language: creators reach a point where they're comfortable but not yet confident enough to fully commit. The real shift is from talking about travel to running a business — learning marketing and SEO and figuring out how to grow income over time. A clearly defined niche helps, Kash added: creators who specialize, rather than flip-flop between topics, make it easier for both brands and Google to understand what they stand for.
2. Why the income gap is wider than you think
The survey revealed a wide income gap — roughly a third of U.S. creators earn under $5,000 a year, with a smaller cluster earning $75,000–$200,000 and up. What drives it, in Carae's view, is expectation: creators who assume $5,000 is their ceiling keep putting in exactly the effort that produces that result, while those who've cracked six figures skip the "middle" far faster than most people assume is possible.
Rates should start from your worth, not your fear of rejection. "Price for your worth and negotiate from there," Carae said. A brand that can't afford your rate will say so; a brand that can will often pay more than you'd have accepted anyway. Approach pricing with an abundance mindset.
3. Rethinking the "unpaid" press trip
An unpaid trip isn't automatically unpaid work. That was Matthew's take on the survey finding that around 20% of creators now refuse unpaid trips outright — a trip can become raw material for affiliate income, future paid brand work, or content resold to a publication. There's nothing wrong with a press trip when the destination or brand genuinely fits your niche, Kash agreed — it's about being strategic, not opportunistic.
Turning one down doesn't have to close the door, either. Carae shared how she declined an unpaid trip to New York because the travel cost didn't add up, but told the brand she'd be open to working together if she was ever in the area — leaving the door open for a future paid relationship.
4. Why affiliates are overtaking sponsorships
Affiliate income has overtaken sponsored content as creators' top monetization method, up 16% year-over-year. Félix traced the shift to the 2023 Google core updates, which hurt display-ad performance across the board and pushed ad revenue down industry-wide. Add tightening sponsorship budgets and stricter brand criteria — plus a real appeal of affiliates: they let creators write what they want instead of fulfilling brand deliverables. There are regional differences too, with French creators largely opposed to running ads and still leaning on destination sponsorships even as budgets shrink.
Article image #2
*Kash started his website in 2009 after [he lost his job](budgettraveller.org/about-me/). Now he's the boss of his own blog.*
The freedom is the real draw. Kash admitted he was slow to adopt ad networks like [Mediavine](www.mediavine.com) — only adding them seven years in — because affiliates don't tie you to sponsor deliverables. And they're accessible from the start: unlike premium ad networks, Carae noted, they don't require heavy traffic to begin earning.
5. Blogging's quiet comeback
Blogging is making a comeback after Google's "helpful content" updates cost some blogs up to 90% of their traffic. Kash and Félix both see the rebound, and Matthew suggested AI search is part of it: when AI assistants surface niche blog content (rather than short-form video) to answer travel questions, blogs gain renewed relevance.
6. Go deep, not wide
Article image #3
*Carae's travel blog features deep dives on destinations such as [the Philippines](girlonazebra.com/category/philippines/).*
Covering a single destination exhaustively signals expertise to Google in a way that scattered topics can't. Carae learned this the hard way — writing about unrelated destinations back to back, a hotel guide for Destin, Florida, followed immediately by one for London, which she believes confused Google about her site's topical authority and hurt her rankings. Her turnaround came when she went deep on one place: everything about Destin, from where to stay to the best beaches. That depth is what helped her start ranking.
7. Don't rely on one golden goose
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Kash pointed to podcasting (citing [Gary Arndt](everything-everywhere.com) of *Everything Everywhere* as a blogger who pivoted successfully) and video — now a major income source for his brand. He also encouraged keeping freelance writing, video editing, or SEO skills as backup income rather than relying solely on one platform's "golden goose."
Long-form content keeps earning while you sleep. Carae made the case for blogging and YouTube as the best channels for long-term income: on a three-week trip to California, she didn't post or work at all yet kept earning from older blog and video content — a sharp contrast to TikTok and Instagram, where income stops the moment you stop posting.
8. Relationships and pitches that land
Personality and professionalism are a creator's best assets. In-person networking — travel conferences, [Travel Massive events](www.travelmassive.com/events) — has been central to Kash's success, and being personable often matters as much as being good at the work. His proof that relationship-building is a long game: landing a campaign eight years after the initial conference meeting.
But there's more than one path in. Carae has never attended a travel conference, and built her business through outbound outreach — contacting hotels and tourism boards ahead of her travels — and, increasingly, inbound inquiries as her search rankings grew. She acknowledged she's likely missed opportunities by not networking in person.
A winning pitch leads with proof, not enthusiasm. Carae emphasized data on clicks, rankings, and bookings over generic excitement for a destination. Originality and destination-specific research beat follower count, Kash added, pointing to his new project [Analog Weekends](www.analogweekends.com) (sponsored by Stay22) as a fresh idea that drew immediate positive brand feedback despite being new. And the language matters: creators need to talk about their work in marketing and B2B terms rather than personal passion, Félix noted, because brands increasingly focus on measurable returns.
9. Where AI actually helps
AI can't replicate authenticity from lived experience — but it's a powerful research assistant. Félix gave a mixed view: he called the trend of AI crawlers reducing traffic to original content "terrible," yet sees real value in using AI to identify underused niches and keywords, and to parse affiliate or Google Analytics data that would otherwise be tedious to compile by hand.
10. Hard-won advice for going full-time
Before quitting your day job, think about taxes. That was Carae's blunt first answer. Just as important, Kash advised, is not losing sight of why you got into the industry — he shared his own experience of burnout despite 17 years of loving the work, and encouraged creators to hold onto that sense of purpose through the hard stretches. Expect a "rollercoaster" of highs and lows, Carae added: success tends to go to those who adapt, treat setbacks as data, and keep pivoting based on what's working.
(Bonus) Smarter, more sustainable partnerships with Stay22
🚀 *Stay22 gives creators a smarter way to monetize travel content across blogs, websites, and YouTube. It offers quick setup, clear performance tracking, and a way to start earning without rebuilding the content you already have. [Sign up to Stay22](tmsv.co/stay22) and start monetizing your content.*
Audience Q&A
Thanks to everyone who sent questions and comments!
Question: Is there a minimum number of visitors/sessions to get started with Stay22?
Félix: Nope! We accept everyone, and none of our partnered merchants require pre-approval, so you can be up and running within minutes of signing up.
Question: Do most travel creators have blogs? What are the best platforms today (YouTube, blog, Substack, Instagram, TikTok)?
Félix: Even creators who primarily work on social platforms tend to keep a placeholder website, especially in travel. Social engagement is short-lived, while long-form content — blog and YouTube — lives on far longer and compounds over time when it's refreshed. Given the nature of travel, long-form is usually the best format for monetization.
Question: How many short-form vs. long-form channels can you realistically manage?
Carae: Start with one — don't stretch yourself too thin. Get one rolling, then add others. I grew my blog to over 250,000 monthly views with only 600 Instagram followers, and once I had steady blog income I could focus on growing Instagram. Pick whichever you're most passionate about first.
Félix: What Carae said. Quality over quantity — in my experience, the creators who earn the most don't spread themselves thin.
Comment (on monetizing newsletters) — *"there's a real moat around email that defends against algorithm and platform changes, and it's a great channel for affiliate marketing".*
Carae: I've started pushing all my readers to sign up for my newsletter, offering an authentic map of certain destinations to capture their emails. It's the best way to "beat" the algorithm or any update that could take you out — direct access to your audience is a game changer. Monetizing it can be tricky, though; the best way to earn from a newsletter is usually by offering a service or digital product. I'm still new to mine, so I'll be curious to see what it looks like in a year.
— A big thanks to Kash, Carae, Félix and Matthew for sharing their insights, and to our LIVE audience for watching. See you online at our next event!
*Download our free [Travel Creator Economy in 2026 Report](www.travelmassive.com/stay22/creators-2026-report) for insights from our global survey about how travel creators are earning, growing, and adapting in 2026 — drawn from 500+ responses across 56 countries.*
*👉 [Stay22](hub.stay22.com/en/referral/travelmassive/travel) helps creators monetize their content and free up their time. Install one simple script to your travel website and start earning.*
Really liked the insights from this chat. I'm glad to see that "blogging’s quiet comeback" is finally talked about too. Thanks for sharing!
I'm Scott Laird, a technology and service delivery leader with more than 30 years of experience, and the co-founder of VoyagePro. I also help develop the ClearDue family of practical apps. I'm based in Elora, Ontario.
VoyagePro began with a simple question while I was planning a cruise:
"How busy will each port be when we arrive?"
I could find pieces of the answer, but only by hopping between websites. Port schedules lived in one place, ship details in another, cruise listings somewhere else. And even after all that digging, I still couldn't compare sailings side by side.
That got me thinking about the bigger problem. Cruise-planning information is scattered. Ships, ports, timetables, safety details, and itineraries are all out there, but they're rarely connected in a way that actually helps you make a decision.
We built VoyagePro to bring that research together. You can explore sailings, compare options, check ports and ship schedules, and keep your planning details in one place — displayed in a format that's easy to read, so the information does the work instead of you.
What started as a fix for my own planning frustration has grown into a long-term business for us. We plan to keep building VoyagePro, adding practical tools, and improving the site based on what travelers tell us they need.
⚓️ Try us out at voyagepro.io
It's still evolving, and I'd love to hear from cruise travelers and travel professionals who've run into the same problem.
What information is hardest for you to find when planning a cruise?
Hi Scott! I too am from Ontario. This is a great resource. As a Travel Advisor, these kinds of details can help me inform my clients. I'll be sure to try it out!
Thank you, Jasmin. We tried to develop a tool to help both Travel Advisors as well as those that self plan. We have gone to great length to ensure that we provide references for all the Port Content so all the information can be verified as needed. Any feedback you have would be appreciated.
Vietnam's travel sector is booming, and its businesses are going global fast. But there's a hidden cost: every currency conversion, transfer, and foreign card fee quietly erodes margins — and many travel businesses lose 3–5% of revenue before they've even served a customer.
This is the "multi-currency squeeze," and it's exactly what [Airwallex](www.airwallex.com/vn-en), a global platform for multi-currency accounts, payments, and FX, was built to solve — turning financial infrastructure from a back-office cost into a competitive advantage that protects margins on every booking.
We spoke with [Nghiep Le](www.linkedin.com/in/nghiep-le-8a4426106/), Senior Manager and VN Commercial Lead at Airwallex. He explains the double conversion trap, how Global Accounts let travel businesses bank like a local in 20+ currencies, and how upgrading your financial stack can provide a real competitive edge.
Article image #0
*Nghiep Le, Senior Manager and VN Commercial Lead at Airwallex. Meet the team at [Travel Massive Asia Conference](www.travelmassive.com/events/travel-massive-asia-conference-2026-da-nang-3982452889) (21–22 August) and [HorexFex Vietnam](horecfex.com) (20–21 August) in Da Nang.*
#Multi-Currency Squeeze: Turning Cross-Border Growth Into Higher Margins
Travel Massive: Vietnam's travel and tourism sector is experiencing massive growth. As businesses look to capture this demand, what is the biggest hidden hurdle they face?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): As travel businesses scale internationally, they hit a massive friction point — cross-border payment infrastructure.
Right now, a travel operator might receive a booking in USD or EUR, pay their international hotel suppliers in JPY or THB, and cover their local operational costs in VND. Operating across this fragmented, multi-currency environment using traditional banking systems leads to massive margin erosion. We constantly see travel businesses losing up to 3–5% of their revenue simply through hidden FX markups and exorbitant international transfer fees.
#The Double Conversion Trap That Makes You Pay Twice
Travel Massive: Why are traditional payment gateways and banks falling short for modern travel agencies and OTAs operating in Vietnam?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): Traditional systems were not built for the modern, high-volume travel industry. The biggest issue is the "double conversion" trap. For example, if a Vietnamese travel agency uses a domestic gateway to collect payments from a European tourist, the funds are often forcibly converted from EUR to VND at a poor exchange rate. If that agency then needs to pay an airline or supplier in EUR, they have to convert the VND back to EUR.
Additionally, manually processing refunds, managing chargebacks, and reconciling thousands of fragmented transactions creates an absolute nightmare for finance teams in the back office. It creates cash-flow friction that stifles growth.
#How Airwallex Global Accounts Let You Bank Like a Local
Travel Massive: How does Airwallex fix these payment headaches for Vietnam's travel sector?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): This is exactly why Airwallex exists. We are a global financial platform built to remove the friction from cross-border business. Think of us as your autonomous finance department that gives you local banking capabilities around the world.
Instead of relying on fragmented systems, Airwallex allows Vietnamese travel companies to open Global Accounts. This means you can instantly spin up local bank details in over 20 currencies — like USD, EUR, AUD, and SGD. When an international customer pays you, or an OTA platform settles your funds, you receive it directly in that currency like a local, completely bypassing forced conversions.
Article image #2
*Financial Infrastructure: Airwallex provides the ability to collect funds in 20+ currencies locally, avoiding unnecessary FX conversions and gateway fees.*
#Smarter Payouts With Direct Transfers and Virtual Cards
Travel Massive: How does Airwallex help them manage payouts to global suppliers?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): Payouts are just as critical as collections. Once you hold those funds in your Airwallex account, you can pay your network of suppliers — whether it's international hotels, airlines, or local guides — directly from your multi-currency balance.
If you do need to convert currencies, you get access to interbank, market-leading FX rates. We also offer programmable virtual cards. Travel agencies can instantly issue a unique, single-use virtual card for a specific supplier payment. This not only speeds up the payment process and secures the transaction, but it makes tying each supplier payment to a specific customer booking incredibly easy.
Article image #3
*View [case studies from Airwallex](tmsv.co/airwallex) and learn about cost-effective global payouts and virtual cards.*
#Killing the 3% Foreign Transaction Fee on Ad Spend
Travel Massive: Aside from booking flows, travel companies also spend heavily on marketing and operations. Does Airwallex support this side of the business?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): Absolutely. To acquire international customers, Vietnamese travel businesses spend heavily on performance marketing across Google, Meta, and OTA networks.
Travel companies can optimize ad spend by issuing corporate cards to pay for Meta, Google, and software in USD to avoid foreign transaction fees.
Using Airwallex's multi-currency corporate cards, businesses can pay for global ad spend directly from their USD balances without getting hit by the usual 3%+ foreign transaction fees charged by traditional corporate credit cards. It helps teams control their ad spend and drastically optimizes their return on ad spend (ROAS) during peak travel seasons.
#How Airwallex Helps Meetup Travel and Aravinda Save Up to 90% on Fees
Travel Massive: Do you have any examples of how this looks in practice for a Vietnamese travel brand?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): Yes! Take our clients like [Meetup Travel](meetup.travel) or [Aravinda Travel](aravindatravel.com). By shifting their high-volume inbound and outbound transfers to Airwallex, they bypassed the heavy fees of domestic gateways. They leverage our Global Accounts to collect B2C and B2B payments frictionlessly, and use our platform for multi-currency payouts.
Article image #4
*[Meetup Travel](meetup.travel) is a fast-growing Vietnamese travel company that connects tourists with locals.*
The result? They drastically reduced their operational costs and maximized their profit margins on every single international booking. Across our portfolio, we regularly save clients up to 90% on payment fees compared to local alternatives.
#Financial Infrastructure Is Your Competitive Advantage
Travel Massive: What is the main takeaway you want readers to leave with?
Nghiep Le (Airwallex): My main message is this: you shouldn't have to sacrifice your hard-earned margins just to operate globally. As Vietnam's tourism sector scales, upgrading your financial infrastructure is no longer just a "nice to have" — it's a competitive advantage. If you want to stop losing money to FX markups, automate your reconciliation, and focus on delivering incredible travel experiences, come speak to the Airwallex team today.
— Thanks, Nghiep Le, for sharing your insights!
Ready to stop losing margins to hidden FX fees? [Sign up for Airwallex](tmsv.co/airwallex_signup) and start collecting in 20+ currencies, paying suppliers directly, and keeping more of every booking.
*A big thank you to [Nghiep Le](www.linkedin.com/in/nghiep-le-8a4426106/) and Airwallex for joining us. To dive into case studies and learn how Airwallex can help your travel business protect margins and scale globally, visit [airwallex.com](www.airwallex.com/vn-en) — or come meet the team at the [Travel Massive Asia Conference](www.travelmassive.com/events/travel-massive-asia-conference-2026-da-nang-3982452889) on August 21–22.*
*[Airwallex](www.airwallex.com/vn-en) is the leading global financial platform helping travel businesses, from OTAs to local DMCs, scale across borders without losing their margins to hidden banking fees. Travel companies can open accounts in 20+ currencies to collect from international tourists, then use those balances to pay global suppliers via direct transfers or virtual cards. By automating reconciliation and optimizing FX, Airwallex helps the tourism sector maximize profit on every booking.*
Thank you team Travel Massive for this great article. Looking forward to hosting the workshop and meeting everyone in the upcoming conference.
For more information about Airwallex and how it can benefit your travel business, visit: www.airwallex.com/global/solutions/travel
Is it too early to ask who is attending WTM London this year (3-5 November)?
I'm interested in any discussions or events about responsible tourism (I run a non profit focused on education and training in this space).
I'll be there!
I will be there now, too! :) Look forward to catching up again.
Fabulous! Please save the date again for our summit and Responsible Tourism Awards event on the Monday afternoon before WTM starts x
That's great Ian. I know there's a Travel Massive London event during the week and interested to hear of anything else you'd recommend.
Yes please! Will do, thanks, Debbie!
I will be there too. Looking forward to meet Travel Massive Community members
We started Sungkar Group in Mataram as a small local tour company focused on Lombok, and over time the work pulled us into Sumbawa and Labuan Bajo too. On paper that just sounds like "we added destinations." In practice it meant learning how land tours, open trips, car rental, and phinisi charters actually behave when you try to run them as one connected product.
Most operators specialize in one line. A car rental company stays in transport, a boat operator stays at sea, a land tour team stays on the road. The moment you start connecting those pieces, the real work begins. And what I've learned is that the destination is rarely the hardest part. The handoff is.
Think about what a single trip actually looks like. A traveler lands in Lombok, needs an airport pickup, a hotel check in, a private route the next day, then a boat transfer or a flight toward Labuan Bajo. Each step looks simple on its own. Strung together, they become a chain, and if one link is weak the whole trip feels unreliable even when every individual part was fine. That is the problem we kept running into, and eventually the problem we decided to build the business around.
The shift for us came when we stopped thinking in single products. It's easy to sell a private tour, an open trip, a car rental, and a boat charter as separate items. But travelers don't experience a trip that way. They experience continuity. They care whether the driver shows up on time, whether the guide explains the route clearly, whether the hotel transfer lines up with the boat schedule, whether someone actually answers when plans change at night. Once we started looking at it that way, the whole product structure had to change. We still sell different trip styles because private tours and open trips genuinely solve different needs, but the operating layer underneath them has to stay consistent no matter which one you book.
A few things I'd pass on to anyone running something similar.
Clarity beats hype. People are far more confident when the structure is clear, meaning what happens on day one, what transport is used, whether it's private or shared, and what's flexible versus fixed. Clean explanations do more work than big claims. Related to that, private and open trips are not the same product at different prices. A private tour is about control, so pace, route, group, and timing. An open trip is about access, so a lower barrier, a fixed schedule, and a shared experience. If you don't explain that difference well, people compare the wrong things and walk away confused.
The weakest point is almost always the transfer, not the attraction. Guests remember the Gili snorkeling or the Komodo route, but the trip's real quality usually gets decided earlier, at the airport pickup, the hotel timing, the boat or flight connection, and the coordination between teams. If the handoff fails, the destination never gets a fair shot. And local knowledge only matters if it's operational. Knowing a place isn't enough. The useful knowledge is practical, like which routes cause backtracking, which timings create rushed transfers, and which combinations look great online but fall apart on the ground. That only becomes valuable once you turn it into process.
The website turned out to be part of operations, not just marketing. We rebuilt ours so packages, destinations, and guides are easier to understand before anyone contacts us, because a lot of travelers want to understand the difference between trip types and regions before they send a WhatsApp message. We're still refining a lot of it, like how package pages explain inclusions without overloading people, how to present private and open trip options side by side, and how support stays responsive when there are a lot of moving parts. Running across three islands means accepting that no system ever really feels finished.
If you're building a travel business with many products in one region, the temptation is always to keep adding packages. But the more useful work is usually the less visible stuff, like tightening the handoffs, cutting unclear trip descriptions, separating products that actually solve different jobs, and treating support as part of the product instead of an afterthought. For us, that has been the real work of growing from a Lombok base into a three island operation.
Here's a link to what we developed: sungkargroup.com
Curious if others here have hit the same thing. Where's the point in your operation that breaks most often, the destination or the handoff between all the pieces?
I'm Daniel Mbugua, Experience Manager at Exclusive Savannah Safaris Kenya. I specialize in designing travel experiences that combine Kenya's iconic wildlife safaris with immersive coffee origin tours to connect travelers with the country's renowned coffee industry.
One of the most rewarding parts of working in tourism is showing visitors that Kenya is so much more than incredible wildlife.
A perfect day can begin with a walk through a coffee farm, learning how Kenyan Arabica is grown and processed, followed by a cupping session with local experts. The next day, you could be watching elephants in Amboseli or witnessing the Great Migration in the Maasai Mara.
Combining coffee origin experiences with wildlife safaris creates deeper connections between travelers, local communities, and the landscapes that make Kenya unique.
I'm excited to connect with the Travel Massive community, learn from fellow tourism professionals, and explore collaborations that promote authentic, sustainable, and experience-driven travel.
What unique local experience do you think every traveler should have before visiting a famous attraction?
I spent two months on Madeira earlier this year.
I walked the levadas, swam in the natural pools, ate at restaurants that have fed locals for generations, and met the people behind the businesses that give this island its character. By the time I left, one thing was clear: Madeira deserved a product built specifically for it.
So we built one. In four weeks.
The *Tripnly Madeira City Pass* (a trademark of Tripnly) is now live — a first for the Portuguese archipelago. This is the story of how we built it.
Why Madeira?
Tripadvisor has crowned Madeira the [#1 Trending Destination in the World for 2026](www.tripadvisor.com/TravelersChoice-Destinations-cTrending-g1): dramatic volcanic landscapes, natural swimming pools carved into lava rock, ancient levada trails through laurel forests, and a food culture all its own.
Article image #1
*The Madeira island group sits in the Atlantic Ocean about 600 kilometres west of Africa.*
And yet, until now, no fully digital city pass existed for Madeira.
That gap was impossible to ignore. Madeira's travelers deserve better, and its local businesses — the family-run restaurants, the independent surf schools, the cultural institutions keeping centuries-old traditions alive — deserve a product that works as hard as they do.
When we arrived in February for the [Madeira Startup Retreat](www.linkedin.com/company/madeirastartupretreat/) (7th Edition), we didn't waste a day.
Four Weeks, 50+ Partners, and a Lot of Doors
Building a city pass from scratch, on an island where you have no network, is hard. There's no shortcut for it. You knock on doors. You have conversations. You listen. You convince people, one at a time, to trust something that doesn't exist yet.
That's most of what those four weeks actually were: showing up, explaining the idea, and earning a yes. In the end, 50+ local businesses gave us one — museums, transport providers, tours, cafés, outdoor experiences, surf schools, and accommodation, independent businesses run by people who've devoted their lives to this island. We're still adding more every week.
Article image #2
*Moments before one of the best lunches of our lives at A Pipa Restaurant & Bar, with Tripnly Global Ambassador Nurgül at Porto da Cruz, Madeira.*
What I didn't expect was how much the island itself would shape the product. Living here while we built it meant every decision was grounded in a real place and real people, not a spreadsheet. The pass is projected to generate over €5 million in annual value for local partners and the broader Madeira tourism economy, channeling visitor spending directly to the businesses that define the island. That framing — building infrastructure for a community rather than just another travel product — came from being here, not from a plan.
The Madeira Startup Retreat, backed by [Turismo de Portugal](www.linkedin.com/company/turismo-de-portugal/) and recognized by the Câmara Municipal do Funchal, made a lot of those first doors easier to open. Innovation and sustainable tourism, hand in hand.
What We Actually Built
No physical card. No app to download. No complicated activation.
You buy it, you get a QR code, and Madeira opens up.
Article image #3
The *Tripnly Madeira City Pass* comes in 1–5 day options from €22.90 and gives instant digital access to 50+ of Madeira's top attractions and experiences — museums, cultural landmarks, levada tours, restaurants, coffee shops, surf schools, coworking spaces, and local brands. It can be activated any time within 12 months of purchase.
#Does it actually save money?
We spent a lot of the build worrying about this exact question, because a pass that doesn't clearly pay for itself isn't worth making. On a typical 3-day trip, the net saving is over €160. On a 5-day stay, up to €339. The math is straightforward, and it [pays off on day one](madeiracitypass.tripnly.com/is-it-worth-it).
Article image #4
*Save on more than 50 experiences in Madeira, including whale watching cruises.*
*Tripnly Madeira City Pass* is available at [madeiracitypass.tripnly.com](madeiracitypass.tripnly.com) and through [GetYourGuide](www.getyourguide.com/en-gb/estreito-da-calheta-madeira-l143943/madeira-city-pass-with-50-attractions-and-experiences-t1279876/), [Viator](www.viator.com/tours/Madeira/Tripnly-Madeira-City-Pass-Save-50-on-50-Top-Attractions/d5392-5651911P1), [Tripadvisor](www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductReview-g189166-d34452472-Madeira_City_Pass_with_50_more_Attractions_and_Experiences-Madeira_Madeira_Islands.html), and 10+ other OTAs worldwide.
What the First Months Taught Us
Since March 20th — and before we'd even reached July 1st — we crossed into the hundreds of sales across all our channels. And we're still counting.
But the number that means the most to me isn't the sales figure. It's this: rated 5.0 on Google by 80+ travelers, with 100% customer satisfaction from day one. Every single traveler who has used the pass has given it five stars.
When you've built something this fast, that's the signal you're really watching for — proof that speed didn't come at the cost of the experience.
Why This One Was Personal
The *Tripnly Madeira City Pass* is our second city pass, after Lisboa, with Torino and several more already in the works.
Article image #5
*Exploring the Immersive Museum of Madeira (IMOM), a contemporary digital art space in Funchal*
But it's the one that feels most personal — because I was there. I lived the destination while we built the product, so I understood why it mattered. Travel technology only works when it's built on real understanding, when the people building it have actually experienced what they're trying to serve. That's the whole lesson of these four weeks, and it's what we mean when we say we want to make every trip count.
A Note on What Made This Possible
This is [Tripnly](www.linkedin.com/company/tripnly/)'s achievement, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. Startup Madeira, Turismo de Portugal, Nova School of Business and Economics, and the Câmara Municipal do Funchal believed in this vision early, and their institutional support made the difference.
And [Nejat Aksoy](www.linkedin.com/in/nejat-aksoy/), my co-founder, who builds the technology that makes all of this possible.
We came to Madeira with a vision. We left with a product, a community, and a deep connection to an island that will always be part of Tripnly's story.
*De Madeira para o mundo.*
Made with ❤️ in Madeira, for lovers of Madeira.
Hello everyone 👋🏽
My name is Alper Aydın, Co-founder & CEO of Tripnly, a Lisbon-based travel technology company
I recently spent two months on Madeira, and the more I explored it (the levadas, the natural pools, the family-run restaurants, etc) the clearer it became that the island had no fully digital city pass despite being one of the world's top destinations. So we spent four weeks knocking on doors and built one with the local businesses, not just around them. That's the Tripnly Madeira City Pass, Madeira's first, and I wanted to share it with this community first.
🎁 Use the code MASSIVE20 for 20% off any pass option (1 to 5-day), valid until August 31, 2026. Grab yours here: madeiracitypass.tripnly.com/order
Would love to hear your thoughts, and hope you enjoy your Tripnly Madeira City Pass! 🙌🏽
Nice one! Madeira is a top place. I bet you also had a great two months there working on that project! Cheers
Hi everyone, I'm Elvina Beck, and I'm excited to introduce myself to the Travel Massive community.
A bit about me: I'm the founder of [PodShare](www.podshare.com), a network of 7 hostels across California that I've personally permitted, built, and operated since 2012. After more than a decade managing occupancy, pricing, and distribution firsthand, I recently started my latest project in the hotel and hospitality industry: Deadline.
#What I'm building: A new private hotel marketplace
Deadline is a new [private hotel marketplace](www.deadlinetravel.com) where verified travelers submit blind bids on hotel rooms while keeping each hotel's minimum acceptable price confidential. Or, as we say on the site: "We have a secret price. Can you guess it?" It's not an auction — it's a guessing game. Match the hotel's secret price to win the room.
Here's a demo of booking a room in Los Angeles for a secret price using Deadline.
youtube.com/watch?v=9DBNeTRTWRM
🎉 If your bid hits the hotel’s hidden price on an off-night, you instantly win the room.
#The problem I'm solving: helping independent hotels sell unsold inventory
Deadline helps independent hotels monetize unsold inventory without publicly discounting their rates. Every hotelier I've spoken to agrees that monetizing unsold hotel inventory is a massive problem. My job now is onboarding indie hotels to Deadline.
After a month of building Deadline - I hit the classic marketplace hurdle: the "Chicken and the Egg" problem. Explained in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=0jIohZ_JRqM
Since launching, I've realized my biggest challenge isn't convincing hotels—they immediately understand the value.
It's getting introductions to independent hotels I haven't met yet.
#We launched a referral program to onboard more hotels:
I recently launched a [referral program](deadlinetravel.com/referrals) that I think could be especially relevant to this community.
Here's how it works: if someone introduces Deadline to a U.S. independent hotel and that hotel lists any number of rooms with us, they receive 50% of Deadline's commission on every booking from that hotel for 12 months.
They only make the introduction. I demo, close, onboard, and support the hotel, and the referrer can track the hotel, bookings, and earnings through their own Deadline dashboard.
It feels like a natural way for travel creators and industry professionals to support independent hotels while earning recurring revenue from relationships they already have. If you know a U.S. indie hotel that could fill empty rooms with last-minute bids from verified travelers, I'd love an intro.
#Follow our startup journey!
🤳 I'm documenting our journey from the ground up through short-form videos, covering hotel onboarding, product development, industry conferences, and fundraising, over on my [Instagram](instagram.com/podshare).
🏆 We recently won FoundersBoost Demo Day Pitch as well as [LA Startup Arena](nerdstage.com/recap/arena-jul-2026) "Best Pitch" for Deadline, hosted by Zach Sekar from Nerdstage.
🎤 [Watch my latest pitch](www.linkedin.com/posts/elvinabeck_yesterday-i-won-foundersboost-los-angeles-activity-7471072597418344448-CT2C) over on LinkedIn.
Thanks for having me!
— Elvina
I'm still in the early days, and that's exactly why I'm posting here.
Communities like Travel Massive are built on relationships, and I believe the best partnerships start with conversations.
If you're a travel creator, consultant, hotel marketer, tourism organization, or simply know independent hotel owners, I'd love to schedule a quick 15-minute Zoom. Even one introduction could make a huge difference at this stage.
If Deadline sounds interesting—or you simply have ideas, feedback, or introductions—I would genuinely love to connect.
Feel free to comment below or send me a message. I'm happy to jump on a quick 15-minute Zoom about deadlinetravel.com or what you are working on.
Hi Elvina, I'm also building a travel marketplace. The coldstart / chicken and egg challenge is real! Might be an area where we can collaborate. One idea: when we onboard a hotel to our platform, perhaps we can onboard them to yours as well. Sent you a LinkedIn connect as well so we can keep in touch.
Hi Everyone - Matt here. I'm thrilled to share the new launch of Pangea's Summer 2026 Release, and photos from our Global Launch Party last week which spanned 6 continents.
We're releasing a fully rebuilt version of Pangea including our new interactive profiles, travel visualizations, community groups, an updated explore view, and the debut of our Beta AI features for launch day participants.
We're also celebrating with our community with launch day meetups in 30+ cities across 6 continents from Sydney to Los Angeles!
🌍 Why I started Pangea
I've been to 123 countries in 12 years of full-time travel, and am on a mission to explore them all. I started Pangea because no other apps were fully solving the challenges I faced, and most of the ones that started disappeared after a year or two. I knew there must be a better way. We are far from perfect, but headed in the right direction to become the most comprehensive social travel, and have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
Pangea helps you discover where friends are traveling, connect with like-minded travelers, get trusted recommendations, and build a living map of everywhere you've explored.
🔴 Problem:
Consumer travel apps are fragmented leaving travelers consistently underserved
Incumbent players miss the most important part: travel is about people & experiences more than bookings & logistics
🟢 Solution:
Assemble a team of full-time travelers & product creators who fully grasp the complexity of the challenge so we don't just "build another travel app"
Apply a new approach to consolidate apps (starting with Overlap, Nomadago, & Flaire) into one integrated platform
Create a lasting category leader, becoming the "Strava for Travel" focused on Social Travel & IRL Experiences by making travel more authentic and connected
📲 What's Pangea do?
Keep track of where friends (and friends of friends) are now, and where they're going (and thinking about going)
Meet other like minded travelers & join communities around the world
Get recommendations from people you trust who have been before
Visualize the trips you've taken, countries/states/cities you've visited, and recommendations you've saved on an interactive and customizable profile
Get personalized AI insights about the places you're going, including people from your network who will be nearby, local contacts, recommendations, delivered to your inbox exactly when you need them
🚀 Where the App is headed?
Automated ways to import past and future trips
Customization in the way you visualize your travels
More ways to add, organize, discover and share recommendations (once we integrate Flaire)
More ways to connect with the right people, events, meetups, communities & group trips, anywhere in the world
Continued refinement and expansion of our AI individual & group trip planning capabilities
Our summer release brings together several key features laying the foundation to become the leading travel app: built by travelers for travelers.
And beyond the app, our incredible community will continue to host trips, events, meetups, and more so you can Explore the World, Together 🌎🌍🌏
👉 Would love to hear what you think! Check us out at thepangea.app
— Matt
When travellers ask AI where to stay in Barcelona, one in five of the city's registered hotels will never come up. Not in any answer, in any language. That's the headline finding of a [new study](stiplo.io/barcelona-study) that asked the four leading AI assistants the questions real travellers ask, more than 27,000 times, to map exactly which hotels the machines recommend, which they ignore, and why.
Article image #4
*Carlo Del Mistro, founder of London based Stiplo — a digital mystery shopper for hotels.*
The research comes from [Carlo Del Mistro](www.linkedin.com/in/carlo-del-mistro/), former Chief Digital Officer of Ennismore (the hospitality group behind brands including The Hoxton and Mondrian) and now Founder of London based [Stiplo](stiplo.io), a start-up that acts as a digital mystery shopper for hotels.
A regular at our [London Travel Massive](www.travelmassive.com/posts/london-travel-massive-979884824) events, and a previous speaker, I sat down with Carlo to unpack what he found: why a perfectly rated guesthouse can be invisible to AI while a middling chain hotel is recommended hundreds of times, why a third of AI's suggestions never touch the live web at all, and what hotels can actually do about it.
Why Barcelona, and why ask 27,000 times
Matthew: You asked AI assistants the same hotel questions real travellers ask over 27,000 times. What lead you to doing this kind of stress test? And what made you start with Barcelona?
Carlo: Over the last couple of years I have watched the question of what drives hotel AI visibility go from niche to one of the hottest topics in travel. There is a lot of good research on who is visible. What I could not find was proper scientific research on what actually drives that visibility. That gap is why we ran the study.
Article image #1
*The [Stiplo Barcelona Study](stiplo.io/barcelona-study) measured 659 registered properties across 27,360 AI travel answers.*
I wanted a closed context. Rather than sample loosely, we took a single city, looked at its entire hotel universe, and asked it the full range of questions real travellers ask. We seeded those from databases of real ChatGPT queries, so we were testing what people genuinely type, not what we imagined they would.
We asked more than a hundred questions, across four AI engines, in three languages, and we asked each one twenty times. That last part matters. Ask an AI the same question twice and you get different answers, so a single pass tells you little. We stopped seeing new hotels appear after about eighteen passes, so twenty gave us a stable picture.
As for why Barcelona. It is a wonderful city for tourists, which appealed to me. but more importantly, it is trilingual. A hotel there is expected to have content and to rank in Spanish, Catalan and English, and that made it a uniquely revealing place to start.
The one in five that AI never sees
Matthew: Let's start with the number that stopped me: one in five registered hotels in Barcelona is completely invisible to AI - never recommended once, in any language, by any assistant. Were you expecting that?
Carlo: It was one of the findings that stopped me too. I had seen plenty of numbers thrown around on AI visibility, but most studies ask only a handful of variations of each question. When you ask 27,000 questions, you see the full picture, and it is stark.
Article image #2
*The study discovered that one in five hotels in Barcelona are completely invisible on AI search.*
One in five hotels in Barcelona is completely invisible. Never recommended once, in any language, by any engine. I was not expecting that. If anything I expected something closer to ninety or ninety-five per cent of hotels showing up somewhere.
What is just as striking is the concentration. Around twenty per cent of hotels capture more than eighty per cent of all the mentions, and then there is a very long tail. The top twenty hotels are named on average more than a thousand times each. The bottom half of the hotels that are visible at all are named roughly 10 times, and the long tail just once or twice. So once you fall out of that top group, you do not just slip down the list. You effectively disappear.
What actually moves the needle, and what's just noise
Matthew: You tested the tactics that dominate the 'generative engine optimisation' conversation. Which ones held up, and which didn't?
Carlo: This is where the study became genuinely exciting. It is one thing to see which hotels are visible. It is another to work out why. We matched the hotels the AI favours against everything we could measure about them, then used several statistical techniques to separate the signal from the noise.
What came out was clear. Four things genuinely drive visibility, and four things the industry talks about constantly turn out to do very little.
The single strongest driver, by a distance, was the number of Google reviews a hotel has. Stronger than anything technical, stronger even than how authoritative the website is. After that: who links to you from around the web, then whether you already rank in Google's own results, which the AI leans on, and finally just having pages a machine can actually read that answer real guest questions. On that last one the twist is that having the content matters far more than how much of it there is.
And the four things the industry sells hardest did almost nothing.
* An llms.txt file, the tactic of the moment: nothing.
* Opening or closing your site to the AI crawlers: no measurable difference to whether you get named.
* FAQ and schema markup: no independent effect.
* Freshness and page-speed tuning: nothing once you account for the fact that big professional sites are simply fast to begin with.
The uncomfortable takeaway is that the technical GEO checklist being sold right now, llms.txt, bot rules, schema, freshness, is measurably not what moves the needle. Reputation and readable content are.
The new gatekeepers: listicles and Reddit
Matthew: When AI recommends a hotel, you traced where it's actually getting its information. Barely any of it comes from the hotels themselves or official tourism boards. Over three-quarters comes from guides and listicles. Who are these new gatekeepers, and should we trust them?
Carlo: It is fascinating to trace. When you ask an AI a question it does two things: it runs its own internet search, usually leaning on Google, and it draws on what it was trained on months or years earlier. It blends the two. What is striking is how little of the final answer comes from the hotels themselves. More than two-thirds of it, about 68 per cent, is assembled from guides and listicles. Only around 7 per cent comes from the hotels' own sites, and under 2 per cent from official tourism boards.
And they are not the gatekeepers you'd hope for. The listicles doing the work are mostly local SEO guide sites, barcelona.com, thehotelguru, foreverbarcelona, not the New York Times or Condé Nast.
The source the models trust most is Reddit. It only appears in about one in eight ai web searches, so it is not the most common source. But when it does appear, the model actually cites it as a source about two-thirds of the time, a higher rate than any OTA or guide. So a machine is now assembling your reputation partly from commercial guide sites and partly from Reddit threads, and most hotels have no idea those are the pages deciding whether they get recommended.
When AI still sells the hotel you used to be
Matthew: The Grand Hyatt was recommended under its old name, Hotel Sofia, over 200 times in your data. Hotels spend millions on rebrands. Your data suggests AI can keep selling the old identity for years afterwards. Is there anything a hotel can actually do to update a machine's memory?
Carlo: What the Grand Hyatt shows is how long it takes an AI to catch up with reality. We forget that these models are trained months, sometimes years, in advance, and then they carry a fixed cut-off. The hotel changed its name from the Hotel Sofia, but in the model's memory it is still the Sofia, and it keeps recommending it that way.
Blocking AI crawlers can't help here either. It won't stop the model recommending you from memory, and it does shut the door on the systems that might otherwise pick up your new identity. To be clear, opening the crawlers won't get you recommended more, that isn't what drives visibility, but it's what lets the model read the new reality when it does look.
The encouraging part is that much of this is in the hotel's hands. When you rebrand, or move information around your site, the priority is to stay readable to AI. Let the inference bots in, and make sure your schema and metadata reflect the new reality. The Grand Hyatt is a vivid example because it is such a prominent property, but I see the same thing constantly on hotels nobody would notice.
Why the machines skew to the top end
Matthew: I thought it was fascinating that four-star-plus hotels are about a third of Barcelona's register but take over three-quarters of AI's recommendations. Meanwhile nearly half of the budget properties never appear at all. Why does AI skew so hard toward the top end?
Carlo: There are a few reasons the upper end pulls so far ahead. First, resourcing. Four-star-plus hotels are more likely to be part of a chain, with real teams behind the website and the online presence, so they tick the boxes AI visibility rewards. Second, coverage. They are the hotels the guides and listicles tend to write about, and that third-party content is exactly what the AI leans on. Third, they simply produce more of their own content, where a smaller hotel rarely has anyone whose job that is.
But the more encouraging story is at the other end.
Some of the smaller three-star and budget hotels punch well above their weight, and they do it by owning a niche.
We had hostels that were close to invisible for general questions. Ask about a backpacking trip or a weekend away with friends, though, and those same hostels were consistently in the top 10. We saw the same for football trips, people heading to the stadium for a match. If you truly own a category, it does not matter whether you have five stars or none. You win the questions that matter to you.
A third of answers come from memory, not the web
Matthew: Roughly a third of recommendations come from the model's memory, not from searching the live web. What does that mean for a hotel that redesigns its website today?
Carlo: It means patience, and it means keeping the door open. If roughly a third of recommendations come from the model's memory rather than a live search, then the beautiful new website you launch today is invisible to that third until the models retrain. A redesign is not a switch you flip. What you can do is make sure that when the AI does look, and when it does retrain, it can actually read you. Keep the site crawlable, keep the structured data accurate, and treat visibility as something you earn over months, not overnight.
Winning the mention, losing the booking
Matthew: Say a hotel does win the recommendation. You found that even then, the AI usually doesn't send the traveller to the hotel's own site. Where does the booking actually go?
Carlo: This, for me, is the finding that matters most commercially, and it is the one hoteliers least expect. Getting recommended and getting booked turn out to be two completely different games.
When an AI names a hotel, it links through to that hotel's own website only about seven per cent of the time. More than nine times out of ten, the traveller is pointed somewhere else. The click lands, in order, on a local "best hotels in Barcelona" listicle first, then on an online travel agency, booking.com most often, with TripAdvisor acting as the review gateway.
A hotel can win the recommendation and still lose the booking, and with it the margin, to an intermediary.
I think of it as two separate battles. The first is being found: getting named when a traveller asks. The second is being chosen and keeping the guest on your website for the booking once you are named. Most of the industry conversation is stuck on the first, on visibility. But you can be perfectly visible and still watch the AI hand your guest to an OTA. Winning the mention is only half the job. The other half is making sure that when you are mentioned, the path actually leads back to you.
It answers in Catalan, but it searches in English
Matthew: You caught ChatGPT searching in English even when the traveller asks in Catalan. What should local hoteliers in Barcelona take from that?
Carlo: This was one of the results I least expected. I did not think ChatGPT would be doing its actual searching in English. This is a ChatGPT trait specifically. Ask ChatGPT in Catalan and roughly four in five of its underlying searches ran in English, with Catalan almost abandoned. Even in Spanish it searched in English about 60% of the time. It answers you in your language, but it goes looking in English. Perplexity, by contrast, tends to search in the language you asked in.
The lesson for a local hotelier is uncomfortable but simple. Your English content is not optional, even if your guests are local. You could have beautiful Catalan content and still be invisible, simply because the engine went looking in English and did not find you. This almost certainly holds for a lot of smaller languages, and it is one of the reasons we chose a trilingual city for the first study.
If you do one thing this quarter: Google reviews
Matthew: If a hotel owner reading this can only do one thing this quarter, what does your data say it should be?
Carlo: When we cut through everything, the single biggest driver of visibility was the number of Google reviews. Not OTA reviews, not TripAdvisor. Google.
So if a hotel owner does just one thing this quarter, they should look hard at where they send guests to leave a review. If you are pointing them to TripAdvisor or an OTA, you are handing that signal away. Redirect it to Google. And here is the part people find surprising. The quantity of reviews matters more than the score itself. Of course you want good reviews, but the sheer number counts for more than most people think.
— Thanks Carlo, for sharing your insights!
Article image #3
*Download your free copy of The Stiplo Barcelona Study.*
*[Carlo Del Mistro](www.linkedin.com/in/carlo-del-mistro/) is the founder of Stiplo, a digital mystery shopper for hotels, and former Chief Digital Officer of Ennismore. [Download the full study](stiplo.io/barcelona-study) covering all 659 of Barcelona’s registered tourist accommodations, across four AI assistants and three languages including the complete methodology, engine-by-engine findings and what hotels should do next.*
*[Matthew Gardiner](/@matthewgardiner) Is the Director of [Travel Massive London](www.travelmassive.com/posts/london-travel-massive-979884824), a fractional marketing leader and growth partner to travel brands and destinations.*
This was really interesting to read as the co-founder of a very small, very remote property (Arawan Luxury Desert Camp, Erg Lihoudi, near M'hamid El Ghizlane). We have almost no budget for the website or technical side, and we're constantly told how bad our website is — so it was a genuine surprise to learn we'd been found and booked through ChatGPT since before we were even six months old. I met a guest at the camp who told me she'd asked ChatGPT for accommodation recommendations in the area, it gave her three options, and after some follow-up questions it told her Arawan would be the best fit for her — for a camp that small, new, and off the beaten path, that really caught me off guard. A couple of other guests have mentioned finding our direct link the same way. And yet when I search generically myself, we don't come up at all.
We assumed we'd never really be able to compete in AI search given our size — we can't build Google review volume fast, and we don't have much in the way of backlinks. But one thing we did do early on was hosting newer content creators at the camp. We were lucky some newer creators were willing to come and work with us, because we had no way to offer things that many larger companies do to the creators, but also we are a really small accommodation of 6 tents and it is more of an experience too. Given your finding that most of what AI cites comes from guides and listicles rather than hotels' own sites, I'm now wondering if that decision is doing more of the work than we realized.
Fascinating stats seeing how little seeded from Hotels and the flip
Side how much cones listicles
HERE'S THE NEXT 5 UPCOMING EVENTS:
Hello Toronto Travel Massive community,
Please join us for a casual summer social on the patio. Re-connect with old friends and acquaintances and meet new people from Toronto’s vibrant travel industry scene.
Please make sure your profile is completed and has:
• Your title and a brief bio that clearly describes what you do in the travel industry
• Website and social media links
• Your photo
Your profile is your business card, make it count.
💬 Join the conversation: @travelmassiveTO #TravelMassiveToronto
🎟️ Event registration: there is a maximum capacity, so make sure to register. If there is a waitlist, we would encourage you to still sign-up in case someone is no longer able to come. If there are any cancellations, we will add people from the waitlist. In the meantime, please have a look at your Travel Massive profile and take a moment to make sure it is up to date as that helps us verify attendees.
Always join the waitlist, cancelations happen, capacity can change.
👉 Please note:
* All guests must be registered to attend.
* No +1s please.
* Must be an active member of the travel industry to attend with an approved and updated profile on www.travelmassive.com. Please make sure to describe what your role is in the travel industry and add associated social media and website links.
👉 Cancellations: If you are no longer able to attend, please try to release your ticket 48 hrs (2 days) before the event so others can attend. Thank you for understanding.
🚨As these events are limited capacity, we have a 3-strike no show policy.
📸 This event might be photographed by a member of a Travel Massive team or/and our event partner. If you do not wish to be photographed, please let us know upon arrival.
Land acknowledgment We wish to acknowledge the Ancestral Traditional Territories of the Ojibway, the Anishnabe and, in particular, the Mississauga’s of the New Credit whose territories we gather on. This territory is covered by the Upper Canada Treaties.
Link to event pageWe're excited to be discovering the new 25Hours Hotel The Olympia. Join us for a social and networking evening with Sydney Travel Massive and friends. Expect a warm welcome from our host in The Mulwray, their late-night cocktail and wine bar and a site visit of the hotel.
🏨 Venue: The Mulwray, 25Hours Hotel The Olympia, Paddington
📍Location: 11 Oxford Street, Paddington (maps.app.goo.gl/DmGWwSJ35eivC53cA)
🗓️ Date: Thursday, 20th August 2026
🕕 Time: 6pm onwards
🪩 Dress Code: A little different from our usual, feel free to dress it up, think your stylish friend's living room
🥂 Welcome drink on arrival, charcuterie
🏨 About the venue: 25hours Hotels are quirky and sophisticated, The Olympia blends the charm of its art house theatre roots with modern design. The Mulwray is their late-night venue with low lighting, rich textures, and Sydney's best cocktail and wine selection.
👉 Spaces are limited, RSVP is essential
Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday August 20th
Link to event pageJoin Top Travel Innovators, Creators, and Marketers at Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026, in Da Nang, Vietnam on August 21-22.
Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026 will be hosted across two days in Da Nang (Friday 21st to Saturday 22nd August) with a focus on innovation, creation, and marketing in travel, featuring: expert-led workshops, industry panels, founder interviews, a startup pitch competition, tourism and creator masterclasses, and community activations.
See our full speaker lineup (updated 12 August) for 2026: www.travelmassive.com/posts/join-us-at-travel-massive-asia-conference-2026-updated-790035485
The Conference for Travel Innovation, Creation, and Marketing
Day 1 (Conference) will be hosted on the final day of HorecFex (20-21 August) — the premier technology event for the tourism and hospitality industry in Vietnam which attracts over 4,000 attendees including senior hospitality executives and features 80 exhibition booths from local and international vendors.
Day 2 (Masterclasses) will take place at Namia River Retreat, a five-star villa resort, wellness and meeting space in the historic town of Hoi An — a UNESCO World Heritage Site, featuring small-group tourism and creator masterclasses led by experts from the Travel Massive network, followed by an exclusive after party to celebrate two days of learnings and new connections.
🏝️ The conference will be hosted at the Ariyana Convention Centre, a 5-star conference facility built for the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, located in the centre of the beachfront Ariyana Danang Tourism Complex.
🇻🇳 Da Nang is the largest city in Central Vietnam and a regional hub for Vietnam's fast growing tourism market, which welcomed a record 21+ million international tourists in 2025 and is the 3rd largest travel destination in South East Asia. Vietnam's top inbound source markets include the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, India, and Russia.
👉 This is an exclusive event for: travel industry professionals, tourism operators, travel startups, verified travel creators, influencers and KOLs, and relevant industry experts and media.
🤩 This is your opportunity to learn from and meet with like-minded professionals and founders from across the tourism, hospitality, and online travel sectors in South East Asia and beyond. We look forward to welcoming you!
Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026 is produced in partnership with HorecFex and supported by Airwallex, Heads on Pillows, In Marketing We Trust, Stay22, Namia River Retreat and Nuna, along with our media partners Vietcetera, Saigoneer and Travel Trends Podcast.
__EVENT_CUSTOM_BLOCK__
Tickets and Registration
General Admission Tickets to Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026 Da Nang (21-22 August) are now available to purchase and includes entry to HorecFex Hospitality Exhibition and Forum (20-21 August). Some restrictions apply:
• Morning workshops on Day 1 are limited to 100 seats.
• Masterclasses on Day 2 are subject to group capacity and availability.
To secure your spot at Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026 Da Nang:
✅ Sign in to your Travel Massive profile, or create an account (it's free)
✅ Purchase a ticket using the "Buy Ticket" link on this event page
✅ Book your flights and accommodation to attend (see FAQ for tips)
Tickets are non-transferrable. You can get a full refund 30 days prior to the event.
FAQ: Where to stay / how to get there:
• Day 1 will be hosted at the Ariyana Convention Centre in Da Nang, Vietnam.
• Day 2 will be hosted in Hoi An town at Namia River Retreat.
• The official hotel is Furama Resort (a 10 minute walk to the convention centre).
• There are many hotel options nearby the convention centre and in Da Nang city.
• Fly direct to Da Nang International Airport (DAD) from international hubs including Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, or transit via Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) or Hanoi.
• Bus and train from HCMC (Saigon) to Da Nang (allow a full day, at least).
• Get an Electronic Visa for Vietnam at evisa.gov.vn (for US and other citizens)
• We recommend to extend your stay to explore nearby sights and Central Vietnam!
Questions or need advice? Contact us at asia@travelmassive.com
Check out highlights from our 2025 conference: www.travelmassive.com/posts/photos-from-travel-massive-asia-conference-2025-in-da-nang-vietnam-401401759
Link to event pageAfter some time away, we're excited to welcome the Travel Massive Tokyo chapter back!
Join fellow Travel Massive members, creators, tourism professionals, and travel enthusiasts from across Japan and around the world for an evening of conversation, new connections, and fresh ideas. Whether you've been part of the community for years or are joining for the first time, this is a chance to meet like-minded people and help shape the future of Travel Massive in Tokyo.
We're also thrilled to welcome Travel Massive founder Ian Cumming, and Melbourne Travel Massive co-leader Casey Mead (100 UN Countries and global travel PR expert), who will be joining us in person to celebrate the chapter's return.
We'll be gathering at one of Tokyo's most creative gallery spaces, so grab a drink, enjoy some light bites, and help us kick off this new chapter together.
Details
📅 Date: September 2, 2026
🕒 Time: 5:00-7:00 pm
📍 Venue: UltraSuperNew KURA, 2 Chome-6-18, Higashi, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0011 kura.ultrasupernew.com
🎟️ Admission: FREE (Registration required)
🍻 🍽️ Food & Drinks: Drinks will be available for purchase at the bar, and light finger food will be provided. Voluntary donations to help cover venue costs are greatly appreciated.
Space is limited, so please register only if you're confident you can attend. If your plans change, kindly update your RSVP so someone else can take your spot. If you're bringing a guest, please include both names when registering.
👉 Click "Register" on this page to reserve your place.
We can't wait to see you there!
— Ally and Scott, Tokyo Travel Massive
Travel Massive Tokyo、ひさしぶりに集まりませんか？
お待たせしました！
しばらくお休みしていた Travel Massive Tokyo が、この9月にいよいよ帰ってきます。
旅行・観光業界の方はもちろん、クリエイターやメディア関係者、旅好きの皆さんまで。日本国内外からさまざまなメンバーが集まり、新しい出会いやアイデアが生まれる交流イベントです。
久しぶりの方も、今回が初参加という方も大歓迎！新しいつながりをつくりながら、Travel Massive Tokyoの新しい一歩を一緒にスタートしませんか？
当日は、Travel Massiveの創設者 Ian Cumming と、Travel Massive Melbourne 共同リーダーのCasey Meadも来日し、皆さんと交流します。
会場は、東京でもユニークなクリエイティブスペース UltraSuperNew KURA。
ドリンクを片手に、軽食を楽しみながら、旅を愛する仲間とのひとときを過ごしましょう。
開催概要
📅 日時：2026年9月2日（水）17:00〜19:00
📍 会場：UltraSuperNew KURA
東京都渋谷区東2-6-18
kura.ultrasupernew.com
🎟️ 参加費：無料（事前申込制）
🍻 ドリンク・軽食
ドリンクは会場のバーにて各自ご購入ください。軽食をご用意しています。
なお、会場運営費へのご協力として、任意のご寄付も歓迎しております。
お申し込みについて
会場の定員には限りがあります。ご参加が確定している方のみお申し込みいただき、予定が変更になった場合は、できるだけ早めに登録内容の更新をお願いいたします。
ご同行者がいらっしゃる場合は、お申し込みの際にお名前をご記入ください。
👉 ページ内の 「Register」 ボタンからお申し込みください。
皆さまとお会いできることを、心より楽しみにしています！
Ally & Scott
Travel Massive Tokyo Chapter Leaders
Looking for something to do over Labor Day weekend? Join fellow Travel Massive members for an exclusive afternoon networking and local history at the newly-refurbished Paris Theatre.
Originally built in 1890, the historic Paris Theatre has recently undergone an incredible transformation thanks to Chris and Fae Pink, the owners and founders of Can Can, and we have secured a behind-the-scenes look at their beautiful new space in Portland. In addition to its renewal as a premier Portland entertainment venue, the Paris Theatre now sits as the centerpiece of Pink Light District PDX, Portland’s latest community-led effort focused on revitalizing downtown and reinvigorating this iconic Portland neighborhood.
Enjoy a special tour of the historic Paris Theatre and hear from the team about Can Can, the Pink Light District and their plans for breathing new life into Portland’s entertainment and tourism industries. A no-host bar will be available in their charming courtyard for libations and mingling and as a special thank you, attendees of our event will receive an exclusive 15% discount for that evening’s 6:30 pm show (tickets available at the box office day-of).
We are thrilled to spend the afternoon together at Can Can’s Paris Theatre and we look forward to seeing you there!
Space is limited. Advance RSVP is highly encouraged. DM Kylie Curtis for questions.
Can Can's Paris Theatre
www.cancanportland.com/about
@cancanportland
Pink Light District PDX
www.pinklightpdx.org
@pinklightpdx
Join the Morocco Travel Massive community for an evening of creativity and connection at Art House Marrakech in Sidi Abbad.
After our previous gatherings, we're bringing Travel Massive to this beautiful artisan space. Join us as we get hands-on with traditional Zwaq painting and connect with fellow travel professionals.
Our evening includes an introduction to Art House and its story, a chance for everyone to introduce themselves, a mini Zwaq workshop led by the Art House team, and finger food and conversation to close out the night.
Details:
Venue: Art House Marrakech, Residence Yamama, Villa 6, Sidi Abbad, Marrakech
Date & Time: 11 September 2026, 6:00pm – 8:30pm
Admission: Free with RSVP
👉 RSVP required - register here on the event page
Schedule
• Arrival & welcome
• Intro to Art House and its background
• Individual introductions
• The Mixer - a little surprise for you!
• Mini Zwaq workshop
• Finger food & chats
Share insights, discuss challenges, discover collaboration opportunities, and build genuine connections with Morocco's travel community.
— We look forward to welcoming you!
Link to event pageHere's the 10 latest classified ads:
This is the end of the page. Thanks for being a part of our community!